“Dinner? You call it dinner? Really, Miss Norah, you allow your goodness of heart to carry you too far. I don’t know which was worse, the food itself, the way in which it was prepared, or the service.”
They followed one after the other.
“The service in particular was bad.”
“Shocking. Never saw worse. Stable boy could have done better.”
“Perhaps we have been unfortunate in our attendants.”
“There is no perhaps in the case. We have been.”
Then came my postscript.
“I thought the service excellent.”
“To have pleased madame is very much.”
That manager of the private rooms favoured me with a bow and a smile, for which—from the expression of their countenances—I should scarcely have been surprised if they had attacked him tooth and nail. The Major spluttered.